The Role of Autophagy in Ischaemic Stroke: Friend or Foe?

Abstract

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved process of cellular self-degradation and recycling of redundant cytoplasmic entities by lysosomal enzymes. Moreover, autophagy also plays critical roles in controlling several biochemical and molecular neuronal physiology such as growth, survival and metabolism. The autophagy process constantly occurs at basal level under normal physiological conditions and gets increased during stress conditions such as starvation and hypoxia. In neuronal cells, it is a vital homeostasis mechanism that helps in the maintenance of protein quality control. In various neurological disorders, several crucial pro-survival and anti-apoptotic effects of autophagy have been reported. However, the function of autophagy in ischaemic stroke (IS) is highly controversial and still debated. Some reports show that it protects neurons during IS, while others advocate it to be neurodegenerative. Thus, the present chapter deals with the possible function of autophagy in ischaemic stroke along with the discussion of various factors influencing the action of autophagy in ischaemic stroke.

Kang, C., & Avery, L. (2008, January). To be or not to be, the level of autophagy is the question: Dual roles of autophagy in the survival response to starvation. Autophagy, 4(1), 82–84.PubMedGoogle Scholar